(08-01-2013 10:46 PM)Momsurroundedbyboys Wrote: Down in the Boxing Ring thread with KC, he said something rather firmly that god knows everything. If that's true, then did god also make atheists? Are we in a spiritual purgatory? Or were we created to test the faith of Christians?

I just find this a bit confusing.

Excellent question, and it's one which unravels basic concepts of Christianity.

Presuppositions:
1. God knows everything
2. "Everything" includes the entire past, present, and future
3. Heaven and hell exist
4. Failure to achieve salvation and remain in a state of grace is cause for going to hell
5. We cannot truly know god because he is supernatural, invisible, and remaining undetectable to us probably because he's giving us freewill

Most Christians believe in most of that. KC might argue the 4th point on the grounds that he believes only certain pre-selected souls go to heaven, which invalidates most of the need for living a "Christian" life - you're either pre-selected or you're not. But that belief doesn't invalidate my argument.

The problem is this. God seems to be hiding; we surely can't find him. There are literally thousands of religions on this planet. Most people in those religions are there by accident of birth - it was mom and dad's religion. Others are there by conversion which usually happens by a) being vulnerable (sad, suffering, lost a loved one, whatever) and b) a chance encounter with someone who spreads word of their favorite religion.

Either way, it's chance.

So some lucky few who were born right or met the right proselytizer at the right time in their life will go to heaven. Everyone else will burn in hell. Based on modern statistics, there are about 2 billion Christians in the world but they're so subdivided into different sects and cults and whatnot that clearly not all of them are going to heaven; even they admit that (usually by telling other Christians that they will go to hell). Even if the largest group is right, that's still less than 1 billion souls saved.

Out of 7 billion people on the planet right now, 1 billion are saved (or significantly less; Jehova's witnesses, for example, believe that number is about a million times too big). That means that at least 6 billion will burn for eternity. Maybe it's much closer to almost all 7 billion will burn for eternity.

God knows this. He knew it before he said "Let there be light." Further, he knew which of us would burn and which would be saved, even billions (or thousands for the YECs) of years before we were born. He knew me, my name, my thoughts, the number of hairs on my head, and my eternal fate, all before he said "Let there be light."

Some argue this point. Some say god doesn't know the future. I suggest, and many Christians agree, that saying such a thing limits god. Saying "Aha, there is something god doesn't know" defies his omniscience and probably his omnipotence too - certainly an omnipotent god could give himself the power to see the future.

So god knew he was sending billions and billions and billions of people to hell. Forever. Heck, if the human race sticks around long enough, it will be trillions and trillions of people. Burning forever. No reprieve.

Why will we burn?

Because god made stupid rules and then did everything he could to make sure we didn't know the rules - faked the age of the universe, faked the age of the earth, faked DNA, faked evolution, faked most sciences, faked history, faked everything, really. And then he gave us the rules disguised as a flawed, illogical, mistranslated, miscopied, deliberately manipulated book of ancient mythology that only a tiny portion of the world received, knowing we wouldn't all believe it. And then he buried that one little book by allowing thousands of other religions to seem just as valid.

How can we possibly choose? God knows the answer - we can't. It's luck of the draw or we burn. He knows it. He knew it all along.

He wants us to burn. Almost all of us. Forever and ever.

And he will hear every scream of tortured agony from every throat of every soul suffering for all of eternity. Billions of agonized screams and begging for mercy every second, for every second of eternity. Literally infinite screaming and suffering and misery, and he will hear every scream. He is omnipresent, after all, so he's there next to every tortured soul, watching and hearing and smelling the torture and the burning and the agony and the screaming.

This is what god wants? This is what he created us for?

It's most sadistic, cruel, evil thing I can imagine. In fact, it's literally infinitely more sadistic and evil than anything else I can imagine.

This is the Christian god. This is his plan. This is his mercy. This is his love for us all. This is his salvation for only a tiny percentage of souls he knew would be saved from before the beginning of time.

This is god?

By this standard, god is infinitely more evil than Satan - Satan is just doing the job that god selected for him from the beginning, doing what he was created to do, doing the will of the almighty, omnipotent, invincible god. It was god who made these rules, god who enforces them, god who created us all knowing he would send us to hell for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Way, way, way worse than Satan.

Dawkins said, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully".

He's right. But I say that isn't even the tip of the iceberg. The crap he pulled in the Old Testament is nothing compared to the book of revelations and an eternity of billions, trillions of souls tortured for ever and ever and ever. Our afterlife is quite literally infinitely worse than the Old Testament, infinitely worse than Dawkins' entirely inadequate description of this infinitely sadistic god.

The only thing that, to me, is worse than what I just described is the evil Christians who wish this fate on people like you and me just because we don't believe in their imaginary sky-daddy. God is imaginary (as is Satan, don't take my point above to be profession of a belief in Satan). God didn't really do this. No god could possibly do this. But those Christians are real, and they really wish this fate on total strangers over a difference in beliefs. That's real evil which, in my book, trumps all imaginary evil.

Edit: to fix my JW/Calvinist mistake.

"Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly." - Robert A. Heinlein

(09-01-2013 04:05 AM)Aseptic Skeptic Wrote: Presuppositions:
1. God knows everything
2. "Everything" includes the entire past, present, and future
3. Heaven and hell exist
4. Failure to achieve salvation and remain in a state of grace is cause for going to hell
5. We cannot truly know god because he is supernatural, invisible, and remaining undetectable to us probably because he's giving us freewill

Most Christians believe in most of that. KC might argue the 4th point on the grounds that he believes only 144,000 pre-selected souls go to heaven, which invalidates most of the need for living a "Christian" life - you're either pre-selected or you're not. But that belief doesn't invalidate my argument.

The problem is this. God seems to be hiding; we surely can't find him. There are literally thousands of religions on this planet. Most people in those religions are there by accident of birth - it was mom and dad's religion. Others are there by conversion which usually happens by a) being vulnerable (sad, suffering, lost a loved one, whatever) and b) a chance encounter with someone who spreads word of their favorite religion.

Either way, it's chance.

So some lucky few who were born right or met the right proselytizer at the right time in their life will go to heaven. Everyone else will burn in hell. Based on modern statistics, there are about 2 billion Christians in the world but they're so subdivided into different sects and cults and whatnot that clearly not all of them are going to heaven; even they admit that (usually by telling other Christians that they will go to hell). Even if the largest group is right, that's still less than 1 billion souls saved.

Out of 7 billion people on the planet right now, 1 billion are saved (or significantly less; KC believes that number is about a million times too big).

(09-01-2013 01:02 AM)morondog Wrote: Well, he could pray for a human to be symmetrical. God wants you to be symmetrical. I kid you not, this was the level

Say what? Was he talking figuratively or am I missing something?

Quote: Got a pretty girlfriend

She symmetrical? And if yes, did he pray her into being symmetrical?

Quote:not, I suspect, as happy as him

'Cause you're all out of whack, you asymmetrical murungu

Quote:unable to even for a moment entertain this believer idea... belief is hard.

Funny thing that. Try as I might, I can't ever put myself in the same frame of mind as when I was a believer. I can do it with all other periods of my life, but not this. It's like it was some other person who was "thinking" all that crap. Weird (not that I'm complaining).

(08-01-2013 10:46 PM)Momsurroundedbyboys Wrote: Down in the Boxing Ring thread with KC, he said something rather firmly that god knows everything. If that's true, then did god also make atheists? Are we in a spiritual purgatory? Or were we created to test the faith of Christians?

I just find this a bit confusing.

Sometimes you guys aren't very consistent. That or you just aren't specifying.

Many of you have recently said that we are all born Atheists.

I think my stance was that we are all born Apatheists which is a type of Atheist. Basically, we are all born without having made a choice - then throughout life we make choices and believe different things.

So I don't think God creates the person distinctly as an Atheist. It seems more reasonable to say that He just gave every person the choice to do as they wish.

“What you believe to be true will control you, whether it’s true or not.”

(09-01-2013 06:32 AM)ideasonscribe Wrote: Sometimes you guys aren't very consistent. That or you just aren't specifying.

Many of you have recently said that we are all born Atheists.

I think my stance was that we are all born Apatheists which is a type of Atheist. Basically, we are all born without having made a choice - then throughout life we make choices and believe different things.

So I don't think God creates the person distinctly as an Atheist. It seems more reasonable to say that He just gave every person the choice to do as they wish.

What about all those people who were born before our lord and savior Jesus Christ? What choice did they have? Or are they saved/damned on a technicality?

(09-01-2013 06:32 AM)ideasonscribe Wrote: Sometimes you guys aren't very consistent. That or you just aren't specifying.

Many of you have recently said that we are all born Atheists.

I think my stance was that we are all born Apatheists which is a type of Atheist. Basically, we are all born without having made a choice - then throughout life we make choices and believe different things.

So I don't think God creates the person distinctly as an Atheist. It seems more reasonable to say that He just gave every person the choice to do as they wish.

What about all those people who were born before our lord and savior Jesus Christ? What choice did they have? Or are they saved/damned on a technicality?

I think that's a Theological puzzle

“What you believe to be true will control you, whether it’s true or not.”